El caso de las Hermanas Figueiredo: Drawings by Johanna Calle

Johanna Calle has developed a particular language within the field of drawing: assemblages made with unconventional materials, signs and phonetic representations of indigenous languages, as well as other forms address drawing as an extended discipline.

Her recent work features photographic drawings made on vintage analog photographs, and the intervention of archives and documents that are part of different research projects. Weaving a chain of images that encourage spectators to reflect upon different social conflicts, Calle also seeks to disallow her subjects from falling into oblivion. In the project Hermanas Figueiredo (2013-2014) presented for at her first solo show at Proyecto Paralelo, she takes as a departure point the one of a kind entomologic archive that belonged to three Brazilian sisters, Calle reflects on a highly patriarchal society that assumes women are incapable of producing scientific knowledge.

It is a project that serves as homage to the Figueiredo sisters, who in the first half of the 20th century became entangled in a legal battle after hiring a professor from a recognized Brazililan agronomy school to catalogue their collection. Upon realizing the professor had deliberately chosen to wrongly assign authorship and ownership of the collection, the sisters proceeded to sue him. Calle intervenes the archive in a redemptive gesture to the Figueiredo sisters and to women involved in exhaustive and rigorous undertakings who are often labeled as maniacs.